Faith Hunters
by Lady Celebare
Summary: Two decades after Mewtwo's escape from New Island, other Two projects begin crawling out of the woodwork. Two of the most infamous are the lovers Curt and Brian. When they begin working for Team Rocket, they fall into more than they bargained for...
1. Drugs

**Notes:** Well, this looks familiar.  I've once again returned to what drew me to fanfiction in the first place – pokemon.  But don't be fooled!  This is no Ash+Misty=Mush -  this is violent, vibrant, and full of expletives.  This is the side of Pokemon you rarely see.  And it's based upon a very famous and well-loved pokemon – MewTwo.  Or, rather, upon the genetic cousins of said pocket monster.  The names of some of my main characters were ripped from Velvet Goldmine, but I've tweaked the personalities somewhat.  In any case… I hope you enjoy it. 

            Pain.  Pain.  Everywhere, everywhere the little creature looked there was pain, rocketing through her veins like acrid venom.  Never before had she felt this agony – even the bone-breaking pain of evolution could compare, nor could the rending tears of labor.  No, this was soul-deep pain – physical talons dug into her chest like razors, but more horrific were the dagger-claws of her assailant's psychic probes.  He gouged viciously at her memories and her very being until she could fight back no more, until she lay in a sweating, weeping heap, shackled and paralyzed in terror.

            "Back, boy!"

            Suddenly the pain was gone – most of it anyway – and her sight, restored.  The raichu sat bolt upright and scrambled back to her trainer's feet, mewling in a cracked voice as her attacker took a disgruntled step back.  She felt so violated, so _filthy_ that she wanted to claw off her own fur until self-induced pain replaced that murky feeling of self-loathing.  He had _touched her soul… he had __attacked her soul.  It was unlike anything she'd ever faced, within the battle ring or without.  She longed for the safe confinement of her pokeball prison._

            "What did you do to her?" the trainer demanded aggressively as he scooped her up in his arms.  "That was no ordinary psychic attack!"

            The opposing trainer smirked and touched the bill of his baseball cap.  "Ask the registry," he sneered.  "I hired this one legally.  'S not my fault you're too poor to buy yourself a worthwhile fighter."

            The raichu's owner scowled with wounded pride.  "Not too poor," he spat.  "I'm a real trainer.  I don't _hire_ my fighters – I train them."

            "Then maybe you should train 'em a bit harder!"

            The raichu shivered in shame and lingering terror as she buried her face in her master's shoulder.  The boy snorted and turned on his heel, leaving the battle ring and forfeiting any winnings he might have gained.  The opponent grinned and punched the air, then turned to his fighter.  "That was amazing, pal," he said, holding his palm out for a high-five.

            The fighter turned a cold blue gaze on the human, flicking his crimson tail dismissively.  "Am I free to go, trainer?" he asked, spitting the last word like something foul.  His voice was cold, hard, hostile, efficient – no trace of victory came from his throat.  "I have errands to run."

            The trainer seemed a little thrown off by the creature's anger.  This was the first time he'd hired a Two, and for all his boastful strutting, he was inwardly afraid of them.  Everyone was.  "Yeah, uh… I guess," he said with a shuffle of his feet, small in his too-large tennis shoes.

            "Good doing business with you," the Two growled as he turned to leave.  The words were spoken without meaning, just another ritual he had to abide by so that society would let him live.

            Curt Fyre had never liked working for the humans.  They were crude, self-important, and completely disrespectful towards the greater powers of the earth.  They used and abused the tools given to them by mother nature, including the gift of partner pokemon.  To Curt, rumors of compassionate trainers was an unsubstantiated myth.  There was no such thing as a good human.  The only reason he dealt with them was the universal need for cash – the human trainers were to greedy, they would pay willingly for the Two's power.  Curt charged a high price, for his skills were renown… and not just for fighting.  Curt could get you anything if you asked politely enough and offered him plenty of incentive.

            As Twos went (for they called them all 'two', no matter how little they looked like their volatile cousin MewTwo) he wasn't particularly spectacular.  He stood a good six feet, five inches from eartip to toe-claw, and his crimson tail was a little more than half of that.  His hide was a charcoal grey that looked dirty in bright lights and ebony in darkness.  The only flecks of color came from the lighting-shaped scars covering his left arm, face, and upper-right thigh.  Those on his arms and face he'd dyed a deep marigold, and those on his leg were as crimson as his tail.  Nobody knew where he'd gotten the scars from, and nobody had the courage to ask him – he was a surly fellow and prone to fits of inexplicable rage.  When he was angry his green-blue eyes would shift to a stormy grey, and all sane sentient beings would flee before him.

            Perhaps this was why people shuffled to the other side of the street when he appeared on the sidewalk, or perhaps this mass shift came from the new public fear of Twos.  The creatures were useful – or so the Kanto government said – but the populace at large still hated them with racist malice.  Curt didn't care about any of this.  All he cared about was the full coin purse tied around his ankle, and his waiting dealer crouching in a gutter a few streets down.

            Curt would never say he was addicted.  After all, these drugs were legal for human trainers to buy for their caged pokemon, so why shouldn't Twos be allowed to buy them?  The humans were afraid of how the drug could enhance a psychic's strength, so they set up a sanction against Two use of performance enhancers like the popular PokeStim and X-Series drugs.  And that was why Curt had to skulk into this feces-smelling alleyway to get the substances his body so eagerly craved.

            "Oho, finished with work early, eh?" cackled the aged and decrepit old meowth as Curt approached him.  "I didn't 'spect you 'till sundown."

            "You'd better have my goods," Curt growled as he sank to his haunches before the wizened feline.

            The meowth nodded vigorously and pulled a black plastic bag from deep within a soaked cardboard box beside him.  "Oh, I got 'em," he said as he clutched the bag to his chest.  "You got the money?"

            "Of course I do."  Curt pulled a wad of bills from the pouch bound to his ankle and offered them to the meowth.  The cat took them, glanced them over, and stuffed them back into the same waterlogged box he'd produced the black bag from.  

            "Enjoy 'em," he cackled as he handed over the drugs.  "That should last you… oh, maybe two days?"

            "Your sarcasm kills me," Curt muttered dryly as he checked the bag's contents.  When he was certain everything was in order, he stuffed the bag into the thick fur of his tail and held the appendage at an angle that concealed the black plastic while making his tail look broken.  He then stood, shook the meowth's filthy paw, and returned to the sunlit sidewalk.  Enormous clawed feet hit the ground with an even cadence as he began to leap, shooting by the buildings with enough speed to knock the hats off passers-by.  Pidgies squawked in raucous terror and flew before him, and human trainers stopped in awe of the great bundle of black fur and steely sinews that would never be theirs to tame.  Curt let them watch.  It would not harm him any, and it would serve to remind them that mankind had created its own worst nightmare.

            All he wanted was to curl up on the floor at home in his dingy little apartment, close by the heartbeat of his lover, so full of chemicals that he could no longer feel the shame and pain imposed upon him by the human race.  Tomorrow would be a new day, a new fight, but until the sun rose on the morrow, Curt Fyre the hated ebony Two didn't want to think at all.


	2. Meeting

**Notes: **Well, this was a quick update.  That's probably because I already had this one typed.  It may take a while for chapter 3… but I'll try and finish it when I have time.  This week is pretty tight.  Ah well.  Enjoy!

            Brian closed his sapphire eyes and sank backwards into his dilapidated easy chair, curling his thick sea-colored tail around his aching ankles disconsolately.  Blood dripped off his toes and onto the dirty, stained floor, warming his feet in a pleasant contrast to the stink of the numerous lacerations on his muscular legs.  He was relieved that only his lower limbs had suffered – his torso, face, and arms had escaped major damage.  He couldn't say the same of his opponent, who'd had to be rushed to the Pokemon Center for emergency limb re-attachment.  Brian despised cheating trainers who double-teamed him in a one-on-one regulation match.

            "Oh, for god's sake, put something on those," Curt growled as he stepped into the dingy room.  He shut the rickety door to their small shared flat, grimacing as paint peelings flaked off and fell to the swiftly-growing pile at his feet.  So many things in this tiny one-bedroom shack were in disrepair, so many things that could be paid for if Curt could quit his addictions.  The Two chose to ignore this glaring fact and dropped his black bag of drugs onto a three-legged table leaning precariously against the wall.

            "Shut up," Brian muttered in reply, curling up into a tighter knot.  "They're nothing."

            Curt snorted and hopped a few steps to Brian's chair.  He peeled the Two's crimson-stained tail away from his legs and grimaced at the savaged flesh beneath.  Normally Brian's fur was a deep azure, striped in alternating red and black from his left shoulder, crossing across his pelvis to his right leg.  Now, though, the fur on both his legs was a matted mess stained nearly black.

            "Nothing, huh?" He crouched on his haunches and began to lick Brian's wounds vigorously, drawing a pained and annoyed hiss from the other's mouth.

            "Get off," he snarled, kicking at Curt's jaw with a flash of ebony claws.  Curt jerked his head back and pinned Brian's leg to the chair with one massive paw, unheeding of Brian's vehement protests.  He thrust his companion back into his seat with psychic energy each time he made a move to escape.

            "We have an assignment tonight, idiot," he spat, rubbing Brian's crusted blood off his charcoal-black muzzle.  "And as you used up our potions last time-"

            "_I_ used them?"  Brian narrowed his eyes and dug his claws into the chair arms.  "You're the one wasting our cash on substance abuse."

            "Don't forget I'm also earning most of that cash," Curt replied with growing anger and annoyance.  "I'm on the street every day.  You spend most of your time sulking up here."

            That shut Brian up.  The azure Two crossed his arms sulkily and let Curt continue his ministrations.  He wouldn't admit it, but Curt was right – they had an assignment tonight, and his wounds needed a good cleaning.  Besides, the rough scrape of the ebony Two's tongue on his leg felt good.  The previous night they'd both been too bruised and worn out from fighting to do much more than collapse on their shared futon and fall into an exhausted slumber.  There were still a few more hours before the sun set and they were called to action, and Brian wanted to be certain those hours were properly used.  To make his intentions known he flicked the tip of his blood-encrusted tail slowly across Curt's neck.

            "Will you stop and let me finish?" Curt growled, though he made no move to push Brian's tail away.

            "I don't think you've even started," Brian replied, dragging his tail down Curt's spine.  Curt shuddered and stopped dead for a moment as the blue Two's tail slithered across his rump.  When Brian pulled away, the black Two stood up and crossed to the end table that held his drugs.  "You asked for it," he growled in a strained tone as he pulled a long syringe from the little black bag.  Brian watched hungrily as Curt slid the fine needled end into his perforated veins.  Curt, by now so used to the prickling pain of the needle, only closed his eyes in bliss as he depressed the plunger, injecting several CC's of X-Special into his toxic bloodstream.  To get the desired effect he always mainlined the drug, and took far more than the recommended dose.  This not only enhanced his psychic abilities, but also acted as a stimulant to his senses of sight and touch.  He slid the needle out, licking his lips as the drug began to circulate, and dropped the used syringe onto the floor blindly.  He then prowled back to Brian's chair, straddled the blue Two's legs, bent low over his face with feral desire plainly written in his grey-blue eyes…

            The neighbors downstairs had stopped coming up to tell the Twos to stop thumping around, especially after a few of them had lost fingers from interrupting Brian and Curt's violent activities.

~.~.~.

            Early sunlight peeked in through the grass-mat shades adorning the Flares' bedroom window.  The night before Alec had attempted to close them thoroughly, but before he could cinch them completely closed his wife had pulled him down onto the bed and so thoroughly distracted him that he completely forgot the shades.  It was their seventh wedding anniversary, after all.

            "Ummn, you forgot the blinds," Sarie mumbled drowsily as she buried her face further into her husband's neck to block out the light.

            Alec grumbled something incoherent and rolled over.  His unruly black hair was even more tousled than usual, sticking up in odd places around his peaceful face.  The sunlight hit his shoulder and threw a shadow silhouette of his body against the wall, shading his eyes from the intrusion of the morning.  Nothing was going to get him out of bed this early, especially not after last night.

            That resolve lasted a good five minutes before being thoroughly shattered by a rumble like two dozen stampeding ryhorns, a rumble that echoed down the hallway and dragged both Alec and Sarie out of bed.  Sarie was the first to rise, as she was less tangled in the bedsheets.  She pulled on a white robe emblazoned with the Indigo Plateau Seal of Excellence – a gift from the newly-instated members of the Elite Four to the gym leaders of Kanto – and shuffled off down the hallways towards the source of the noise.

            When her feet led her into the spacious Battle Hall, she was struck by a combination of awe and fear.  Standing at her usual spot at the far end of the room was a tall, lean Two with a coat of mottled blue and silver.  His deep blue tail was lashing behind him, and waves of psychic energy emanated from his body in waves.  Standing behind that Two in the high trainer's platform were Sarie and Alec's two children, and that worried Sarie the most.  On the other side of the room, closest to the entrance hall, stood a boy no older than twelve, flanked by a Raichu and a Gollum.  An injured Beedrill hovered in front of him listlessly.  As Sarie dashed along the sidelines towards the Two she vaguely heard the boy call back his Beedrill and send out his Raichu.

            "Kids, are you ok?" she called to her children as she ascended the stairs.  She would leave the Two for later – right now she wanted to take care of her children.

            "Uncle Tassadar said you and Daddy wanted to sleep in," chirruped her daughter.  "He let Arthur do your morning gym work for you."

            "Did he?" Sarie said, a little less worried now.  If 'Uncle' Tassadar had admitted this Two to her gym, then he must be all right.  Tassadar had an excellent judge of character.

            "Arthur's so awesome!" the little boy exclaimed as he leaned over the railing to watch the fight.  Sarie had to agree with her son.  The Two was magnificent and, even if he wasn't the most powerful of his kind, he was in top form and working to the best of his abilities.  It had taken just one kick from his powerful hind limbs to put the Raichu out of commission, and he was making short work of the Gollum with a barrage of psychic assaults.

            Even though Sarie felt a little more calm about the situation, Alec certainly did not.  He dashed across the room just as the Gollum fell with a deafening thud.  He skidded to a halt in front of the Two even before the challenger had returned his fallen pokemon.

            "Who are you?" he demanded, adjusting his glasses reflexively.  Always the protective father, Alec didn't trust a stranger anywhere near his children.

            The silver Two turned to Alec and bowed slightly, a strange gesture for a male Two.  They rarely showed any sort of deference to human beings.  This one, though, looked young – no more than nineteen – and wore a gentle expression enhanced by the pale blue tear-marks below his sapphire eyes and the tousled boyish hair that was the same color as his tail.  A mosaic of streaks and spots in the same pale blue as the tear-mark covered his left arm.  "I am Arthur, sir," he said quietly.  "I apologize for intruding, but I was seeking a place to stay when I found your gym.  The Pokemon Center turned me away, you see.  I asked sanctuary from an Alakasam on watch at the door, and he let me in."

            Alec seemed a little disquieted by the statement.  Anti-Two sentiment had leaked into Viridian's fairly tolerant community in recent years as reports of Two attacks on humans became more common, but he didn't think the Center would turn down any creature in need.  Alec himself harbored no animosity towards the Twos, but then again, he'd been there two decades ago when the last successful Two experiment escaped.  He'd been only six at the time, but his father had told him what had happened.  After all, hadn't his father worked on the Two project for years?  He'd likely been responsible for many of the first live Twos, the first survivors who had escaped execution.  Over one-hundred of these failed experiments had escaped over the ten years that led up to the creation of MewTwo, and over the past thirty years those highly sexual creatures – Twos were born to be bred, after all – had spawned hundreds more second-generation genetic anomalies.  In his own scientifically curious way, Alec had followed the evolutionary progress of the Twos.  He held no animosity towards them, but he didn't trust any strange creature with his children.

            "Well, you're welcome here," Sarie called down before Alec could say anything more.  She then turned to the boy at the opposite end.  "And you, young challenger – you fought a good match.  Heal your partners and return again to try your strength a second time."

            The boy nodded a bit dejectedly and slunk out of the gym, cradling his three pokeballs in his arms.  Arthur turned his eyes on Alec for confirmation.  Though it was obvious that Sarie ruled the roost, the Two had been programmed to see males as the dominant members of any relationship.  Alec looked at his wife a moment, then shrugged and smiled.  "It's fine with me," he said.

            Arthur gave a half-smile, a little relieved and a little unsure at the same time.  Though he was grateful for a place to spend the night, he was also wary of spending too much time in the company of humans.  He desperately wanted to be accepted by the community of Twos, but at the same time it couldn't hurt much to stay with humans for one evening.  Besides, there were no Twos around here anyway – and the little human children were rather endearing.  So Arthur would spend the night, lick his wounds, and make some plans for where his feet would take him next.


End file.
